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Wide Sargasso Sea
The significance of the title
Relationship with Jane Eyre
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The importance of the title:
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Rhys had several other potential names for this novel,
including the straightforward The First Mrs Rochester and Le
Revenant (“ghost” or “zombie”).
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The eventual selection of the title distinguishes the novel
from Jane Eyre and focuses on Rhys’ powerful and personal
message of alienation.
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How does this title reflect some of the themes and questions
of the book? What does it highlight or bring to the surface?
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Where is Sargasso Sea?
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…continued
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The Sargasso is a “sea” roughly the size of the United States, which
encompasses the waters from Chesapeake Bay to Gibraltar in the north, and
Haiti to Dakar in the south . By definition, its inhabitants are hapless wayfarers,
often plants torn away from their habitats by storms and drift northward–like
Antoinette, torn away by Rochester, where “curious things happen” to her, and
she is so bewildered and lost that by the end she does not recognise, nor
believe, that she is truly in England .
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The animals trapped in the Sargasso are typically poor swimmers, which
ultimately “must cling to the weed” in order to receive any kind of support.
This is a perfect metaphor for Antoinette, as she could have survived on her
own, but once married to Rochester, she loses all her property–as it becomes
his–and must cling to him in order to have any money or property at all. Finally,
she has “no roots or holdfasts for attachment,” and finds herself essentially
alone at Thornfield Hall, abandoned by all those who had contributed to her
ending up there in the first place. However, her general resoluteness allows
her to live for some years, much like some individual plants trapped in the sea.
Ultimately, though, her “endless drifting” leads to her complete loss of sanity
and eventual suicide.
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Where in the ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’?
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…so…
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The book focuses largely on cultural and ethnic differences as we see
many of them clash from Jamaican, to British, to Martinique and so on.
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We are able to see through the different perspectives of cultural
background with Antoinettes’s Creole heritage contrasted against the
British Mr.Rochester. The two characters are aliens to each other’s
homeland, and both find themselves lost and out of place.
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The title of the book seems to highlight the very physical nature of
culture and the differences between them formed through geography.
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The wideness of the Sargasso sea emphasises the disconnect between
the characters and the diversity of culture which defines individuals. It
also stresses the power that displacement of the novel’s characters
from their home, can have.
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Wider connection…
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The environment of the Caribbean and the area surrounding
the sea also resonates within the novel, making the title an
appropriate one. There is extensive use of the environment
throughout the novel. Heat, breeze, mountains, sunlight,
nights, forests, among other nature related imageries are
often used as an intensifier of the underlining situation
and/or idea Rhys is trying to express in her novel.
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Origins in Jane Eyre:
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Jean Rhys chose to give the animalistic ghost that haunts
Thornfield Manor a voice; readers of Jane Eyre know her only as
the first Mrs Rochester or Bertha. Jane Eyre provides the reader
with the ‘fear’ of the madwoman in the attic, but Wide Sargasso
Sea provides the reader with the fear that this woman has
towards English society and Mr. Rochester in particular.
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In so many ways the two books enhance each other when read
in conjunction. Mystery surrounds the character of Mrs.
Rochester in Jane Eyre, while mystery surrounds the characters
of Thornfield Hall in Wide Sargasso Sea. Since the narratives are
told from different perspectives in each of these novels, we see
how both characters, and thus both nations, remain critical and
skeptical of one another.
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Rhys’ artistry…
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Language is used in Jane Eyre by English characters leaving
the story one-sided. The haunting presence of Bertha
Rochester (a seemingly English name) in the manor conveys
the fear of the unknown and the idea of the ‘other’.
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Rhys’s story explores the importance of perspective and
narrative voice- who do you feel sympathy/pity for in Wide
Sargasso Sea/ Jane Eyre?
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They each tell a story from a limited perspective but contain
overlapping attributes in the main female characters such as
religion or obeah, independence, and an ambiguity around
who constitutes family.
+  In Jane Eyre, Mrs. Rochester is a madwoman, a possible
metaphor for all sorts of things, but she is most certainly not
an individual. When encountering her in that novel, she
seems more animal than human, and not really a figure to be
pitied. Her insanity seems to strip her of any humanity, which
helps the reader to forgive Mr Rochester for locking her
away and attempting to marry Jane. But in Wide Sargasso Sea,
Antoinette’s humanity is restored. Through her narrative
voice the reader is placed inside of her, given an intimate
view of her life. We can see Antoinette’s struggle to find her
place, and her deep unhappiness.
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The freedom given to an author in something like a novel
where the author has complete control over everything, down
to the very spellings of words, lets Rhys develop a world
where it is Mr Rochester and whatever baggage his character
may carry, and not her Antoinette, who is the interloper.
While this novel can be seen as a prequel to Jane Eyre, the
ability of Rhys to build a whole new world for it also lets it
stand alone from Jane Eyre.